Re: GWB
WMD a painful blot, says Powell<br />By Francis Harris in Washington<br />September 11, 2005<br />The Sun-Herald<br /><br />Colin Powell, the former US secretary of state who told the United Nations that Saddam Hussein was concealing weapons of mass destruction, has conceded the assertion will always be a "painful blot" on his record.<br /><br />During a lengthy TV chat with Barbara Walters, the queen of the serious interview, Mr Powell tried to explain how the West had made mistakes in the run-up to war.<br /><br />Asked whether the statement about WMD tarnished his reputation, the former general responded: "Of course it will. It's a blot. I'm the one who presented it on behalf of the United States to the world and [it] will always be a part of my record. It was painful. It's painful now." The soldier-statesman made a dramatic and detailed presentation to the UN Security Council a month before the invasion of Iraq in March 2003. It relied on the extensive use of intelligence material, which later turned out to be inaccurate.<br /><br />That fuelled allegations from Europeans and American liberals that, as the moderate face of a hardline administration, he had allowed himself to be misused.<br /><br />But during the interview Mr Powell was unwilling to apologise or blame other senior figures. In particular, he refused to attack George Tenet, the former CIA director whose agency provided him with poor information during a week-long briefing before his Security Council speech. "He didn't sit there for five days with me, misleading me," Mr Powell said. "He believed what he was giving me was accurate . . . the intelligence system did not work well."<br /><br />Instead he blamed intelligence officers further down the chain of command, who harboured doubts about the quality of the West's intelligence but remained silent.<br /><br />"There were some people in the intelligence community who knew at the time that some of these sources were not good and shouldn't be relied upon and didn't speak out," he said. "That devastated me."<br /><br />Mr Powell left office at the end of Mr Bush's first term earlier this year. The Washington rumour mill suggested that he was surprised that Mr Bush accepted his resignation while his rival for influence, Donald Rumsfeld, the Defence Secretary, had stayed. But there was no sign of disloyalty during the interview. When Mrs Walters tried to tease from him an admission that the Iraq war had been a bad idea, he said: "Who knew what the whole mess was going to be like?"<br /><br />"I'm always a reluctant warrior and I don't resent the term, I admire the term," he said. "But when the President decided that it was not tolerable for this regime to remain in violation of all these UN resolutions, I'm right there with him on the use of force."<br /><br />Asked whether he had put loyalty to the President above his own judgment, Mr Powell said he had not: "Loyalty is a trait that I value and yes, I am loyal. And there are some who say, 'Well, you shouldn't have supported it. You should have resigned'. But I'm glad that Saddam is gone. I'm glad that that regime is gone."
<br /><br /> http://news.yahoo.com/news?tmpl=story&u=/ap/20050910/ap_on_go_pr_wh/bush_ap_poll <br /><br />How much lower will it go?
